Publications & Testimony

Lexington Herald Ledger By William S. Sessions, former Director, FBI I urge Kentucky’s legislators to pass and Gov. Ernie Fletcher to sign legislation to raise the age of eligibility for capital punishment to 18. I write as a citizen with many years of law enforcement experience, having served three presidents as the director of the FBI. I also was chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas and, before that, was a U.S. attorney. I am also privileged to be a…

Two new books on the death penalty offer readers an examination of capital punishment law and America’s use of this punishment. In “Understanding Capital Punishment Law,” a new book published as part of the LexisNexis Understanding series, law professors Linda Carter and Ellen Kreitzberg offer students in capital punishment courses an overview of this complex area of law. The book includes a thorough review of constitutional law and current issues related to capital punishment in the U.S.

Los Angles Daily Journal February 19, 2004 Editorial By Richard C. Dieter, Executive Director, Death Penalty Information Center The U.S. Supreme Court took a step in the right direction when it agreed to review the constitutionality of executing juvenile offenders in Roper v. Simmons. As a society, we value our youth. We put great hope in them for our future, and we do not give up on them. For these reasons and more, juveniles ought not be subject to the death penalty. As this case moves…

Casper (WY) Star Tribune February 19, 2004 Editorial Wyoming’s House of Representative is now considering House Bill 5, which prohibits the execution of juveniles. This measure deserves support, for a number of reasons. The death penalty should be meted out only to the worst of the worst members of society, if it’s meted out at all. And juveniles who are convicted of murders committed prior to their 18^th birthdays rarely could be classified as such. For those rare juveniles who fit into…

Hung Thanh Le, a Vietnamese foreign national, is scheduled for execution on February 26^th in Oklahoma. Governor Brad Henry has so far rejected a unanimous recommendation from the Oklahoma Board of Pardon and Paroles to reduce Le’s death sentence to life in prison. Le’s appeal notes that he was not informed of his right to contact the Vietnamese consulate when he was arrested and may have been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from the Vietnam war. Leaders of the…

Alan Gell of North Carolina became the nation’s 113^th exonerated death row inmate today, February 18, 2004. Gell, who has maintained his innocence since his 1998 conviction, was acquitted of all charges by a jury that deliberated for only two and a half hours at his retrial. In December 2002, a North Carolina judge vacated Gell’s murder conviction and ordered a new trial after ruling that prosecutors withheld important evidence that might have helped exonerate Gell at his first trial. Among the…

Rapid City Journal February 18, 2004 Editorial Last week the state Senate rejected a bill that would have repealed South Dakota’s death penalty law while passing a bill that removes capital punishment for individuals who committed their offense when they were less than 18 years old. The juvenile death penalty bill, SB182, passed the Senate, 23 – 11, and awaits a hearing in the House Judiciary Committee. Federal law and 29 other states have passed laws that prohibit capital punishment for…

Washington Post February 18, 2004 Editorial THE SUPREME COURT has announced that it will review the constitutionality of the death penalty for people who were children when they committed their crimes. But don’t expect Texas to stop executing juvenile offenders while the court does so. The Lone Star State has scheduled, through the end of June, the executions of four convicts for crimes committed while they were still underage. Unless the courts step in and stop these executions, Texas could…

The authors of a new study published in the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies (J. Blume, T. Eisenberg, & M. Wells, “Explaining Death Row’s Population and Racial Composition,” Vol. I, Issue 1, March 2004, at 165) concluded that Texas’ reputation as the leading death penalty state in the U.S. is attributable more to its high number of executions and the large number of murders in the state, rather than to its sentencing rate. Despite leading the country by far in terms of number of executions…

Federal prosecutors dropped charges against Darrell Rice shortly before he was to face capital charges for two murders in Shenandoah National Park. New forensic evidence cast doubt on the case against Rice, despite the fact that Attorney General John Ashcroft had made a public announcement of Rice’s indictment employing a new law in 2002. (Washington Post, Feb. 7, 2004). A federal judge threw out a jury’s (July 2003) verdict of guilt in the capital case of Jay Lentz, accused of murdering his…